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April: Quiet, Rebirth, Reassment: Recipes

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The beginning of April saw Passover fill that first week. Passover is the Jewish holiday commmemorating the Jews escape from slavery in Egypt. Part of the observation is forgoing all bread in favor of unleavened bread: matzo. When it came time to run, there wasn’t time to bake the bread, and so they took it as it was.

With kids being picky eaters, it can be difficult to suddenly simply remove a staple from their diets such as bread. It’s not just bread. It’s cereal, oatmeal, muffins, bagels, and I could spend hours listing all the ways they claim that I’m torturing them.

This year we tried two new recipes.

The first is matzo lasagna. My sister’s mother-in-law makes this, and my sister has always talked about how good it is. I thought there was some secret family recipe (her mother-in-law is Italian), but the simple answer is just replace the pasta noodles with matzo boards. In all of the recipes I found online, it directed soaking the boards in water. I did not do this. The meat sauce was enough liquid to help soften the matzo. [I should note that adding the meat sauce makes this lasagna not parve. If you keep kosher, separating your meat and dairy, eliminate the meat and use only a layer of sauce in the lasagna.]

I layered everything, ending with a layer of matzo and a copious amount of cheese, and baked it for thirty to forty-five minutes in a 350 degree oven. I would receommend checking it after thirty minutes to see if it’s ready.

Serving of Matzo Lasagna. (c)2018

The second new recipe was something I just did on my own. It’s not really rocket science, but I was still pretty proud of myself.

I took two boards of matzo and placed them in a Ziploc bag. I used my fingers to gently mash them into crumbs. I beat two eggs in a bowl. I took chicken tenders, soaked them in the eggs, then rolled them in the bag of matzo crumbs, and fried them in vegetable oil. They came out perfectly and were delicious!